


Shatter

by minutiae



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Eskel you should not go into creepy forests, Gen, I should not have to tell you not to poke magic things, Magic, Magical Accidents, Seriously Eskel this was a bad idea, Witcher School Rituals, human remains, yet here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:54:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27322297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minutiae/pseuds/minutiae
Summary: Yennefer asks Eskel  to investigate mysterious circumstances.He finds someone that he used to know.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 32
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge: Halloween Special





	Shatter

Eskel had heard this song before. It was faint and old and pinged the shadows of a memory in the back of his head. Was it something he had heard and forgotten in the last century? It held the faint fuzzy quality of a long time ago. He hummed along, stepping quietly through the forest. There wasn’t a town for miles that he knew of, he was headed farther south than usual for a contract. Yennefer had sent him a message, a spelled raven that had squawked and fluttered and bit at his fingers until he took the rolled up parchment. He knew it was a raven from her thanks to the sheer audacity of the spelled bird. It had flapped and fluttered and snatched at his medallion until he’d caught it in one quick movement, exploding into a small puff of bright purple smoke and a squawk.  
  
All he’d gotten was a request to see to this problematic contract before Saovine. Yennefer rarely gave details, but the mention of a deadline had him rush across half the continent, riding through rain and running around towns he usually stopped at.  
  
Despite his often intimidating first impression, Eskel had managed to build himself a network of towns and contacts that left hunting contracts down less stressful. It helped greatly how even small town sorcerers and mages brightly and sincerely welcomed his arrival.  
  
No one welcomed his arrival in this forest. He left Scorpion tied well back, as soon as he’d felt the sticky buzz over his skin that reeked of magic. The forest did not look healthy here, and it only got worse the deeper he went into the woods.  
  
What had started as just an unpleasant scrape of magic on his skin had started to feel a lot like a deep mire of filth, and he absently rubbed at the scars on his face as if the touch of his own hand could slough off the slick slime of corrupted magic. His boots stuck and sucked at the black mud on the forest floor, sticks and detris soft and soupy. He reached out at the first fully blackened tree before him to snap a branch off.  
  
The bark sloughed off into his hand, the wood of the branch softly bending and stretching before pulling off the tree like taffy. He shuddered, dropping the stick in the mud. He stepped closer to the tree, sliding a hand up the thick bark. If he could guess, it was a sycamore. He pressed a hand to the trunk, which yielded beneath his hand. Even the air near the tree felt thick and slick, like sliding his hand through oil as he squeezed the trunk of the tree, tearing off a huge chunk of the tree.  
  
He stared at the spongy hunk of wood in his hand, the black sap of the tree dripping and running down his hand. The trunk itself bled sap as well, soaking the already blackened soil at the foot of the tree. Eskel tossed the chunk of wood away, rubbing the filth off on the seat of his leathers and he drew his silver sword.  
  
Whatever doing this was nothing he’d ever seen before, and not anything he’d heard of in the bestiaries at Kaer Morhen. If he survived this, a detailed entry would definitely need to be added.  
  
So he crept through the shadows, slinking softly until his foot slipped on the first resistance he’d met since entering the stand of trees. He sunk his hand into the mud, finding the mysterious object easily. He pulled out a small, blackened hip bone.  
  
Resheathing his sword, he dropped to a crouch, digging into the soil before he found more bones, pulling them from the sucking stew the earth had become. The more bones he pulled out, the more desperate he became. He’d stopped, sweaty and shivering after he’d unearthed enough ribs and femurs to make it clear that there was more than one corpse scattered here.  
  
He leveraged himself to his feet, swaying where he stood. Monsters were easy. Often by the time he stopped in a town the corpses were managed. He’d stood in the pile of slaughtered human remains once already in his long life, and that was one too many times for him. Now he stood, sinking slightly, in a blighted forest steeped in magical slag.  
  
The slight susurration of the forest around him sent a shiver down his spine again as he crossed the invisible barrier created by the disassembled skeletons. The atmosphere thickened, oppressive and silencing for all except the hum that grew slowly. The resonance of the song increased the closer he came to a space in the trees ahead.  
  
A tilting shack stood in the small clearing, shadowed and squalid. Above it shimmered the semi transparent shadow. The imposing figure seemed to be the source, the spoiled surges of magic pulsing with the beat of the song. He watched the figure slowly descend, pulling his silver sword out slowly, shifting into a better stance.  
  
He wasn’t sure what this spectre could be, pulsing a song so old and deeply it made his teeth vibrate. He recognized it now, caught in the spell of the magic wrapping around him. He could hear the voices of the skeletons surrounding him. The song was old, a song of ceremony he last heard as a young boy.  
  
There was a ritual the eldest witchers would hold behind the keep in the deep forest sheltered by the steep walls of the keep and the sheer cliffs of the mountainside. The younger boys would often try to slip out to watch, as the drumming and resonant voices chanting and singing would echo through the mountains. It was enticing and mysterious, but the sacking had happened long before Eskel and Geralt were old enough to be included. Questions in the years that followed only had Vesemir shaking his head.  
  
The ritual was lost. The song could not be sung by only four. The magic was wild and savage. No matter Eskel’s aptitude they could not hope to contain and direct it. The chanting and drums would never again echo the mountains. Until it did, here and now.  
  
Eskel’s sword fell lax in his grip, finally able to recognise the face of the ghost before him. The sacking severely damaged social ties between the schools, but this is a face he knew. A face he once knew well.  
  
Selenay shimmered before him, and while details of this ghostly form before him were vague he could see the shadows of swords over one transparent shoulder. He reached out to meet ghostly fingers, the song crashing into a crescendo around him, the beat of the song reverberating in his chest. The beat seemed to crash into his skull, sparks of pain as their fingers met.  
  
He hit his knees as the collision of magic swallowed him, the sickening squelch of his knees sinking into the mud ignored. Ghostly hands cradled his face as he whispered the words to the song he didn’t know he knew. As the final verse ended, he closed his eyes as the magic sparked again, a brilliant bright flash around him, before he collapsed into silent slumber.  
  
  
  
  



End file.
